Tag Archives: movie review

Solis is a 2018 Sci-Fi thriller written and directed by Carl Strathie and starring Steven Ogg (The Walking Dead) and Alice Lowe (Prevenge).

“When Troy Holloway (Ogg) wakes up to find himself trapped aboard a drifting escape pod shooting towards the Sun he quickly realises the true terror of his situation. With rapid oxygen depletion and a burn- up rate of 90 minutes, Commander Roberts (Lowe) leads a rescue party to save Holloway before time runs out.”

It’s worth mentioning right here at the start that Solis is very similar to the 2010 thriller Buried, starring Ryan Reynolds as Paul Conroy, a truck driver working in Iraq who wakes up buried alive in a coffin with only a lighter and a mobile phone.

On the one hand, Holloway has a lot more to do than Conroy in Buried which leads to a far more proactive lead character. He is also able to explore the immediate outside of his entrapment which is far more than we ever see in Buried.Continue reading →

The Unseen is a 2017 psychological thriller written and directed by Gary Sinyor. The film stars Jasmine Hyde, Richard Flood and Simon Cotton and was produced by Magnet Films.

“Gemma and Will are shattered when their son dies in an accident. Gemma blames herself and starts to have panic attacks that affect her eyesight. Will, tormented, believes he is hearing his son’s voice calling out to him. To escape their grief, they take up an ex-pharmacist’s offer to stay at his Lake District country getaway but are his intentions entirely benevolent?”

Low budget independent horror is a mixed bag and requires a formula of simplicity, restraint and creativity that not every production can get right.

However I am happy to say that The Unseen nails it.

The shots are crisp, the lighting and music are atmospheric without being distracting, and the narrative moves along at a steady pace. Most importantly, The Unseen is a gripping thriller with sympathetic characters and a healthy amount of emotional rawness.

Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack is a 2012 horror anime based on the titular manga by Junji Ito (Tomie) that ran from 2001 to 2002. Arguably the only creature feature anime available in the UK, the OVA was written and directed by Takayuki Hirao and wins the award for being the most bizarre concepts I have ever seen for a Sci-Fi Horror film. Gracefully short at a mere 71 minutes long, Gyo was produced by the Ufotable animation studio and was released in the UK via Terracotta Distribution.

Kaori is on holiday with her friends when walking fish begin to rise from the sea and invade Japan, bringing with them a ‘death stench’ that smells like rotting corpses. Leaving her friends at the vacation home, Kaori teams up with cameraman and reporter Shirakawa as she struggles to make her way back to Tokyo and find her finance Tadashi. This is where things start to get really weird… Continue reading →